There’s wet globby snow that melts as soon as you pick it up. There’s packing snow, perfect for snowballs. There is light powdery snow that won’t clump together. On one particular winter day in the early 80s, we had hard brick-like snow that allowed us to build an awesome snowfort.
Together with my sister, Bob Schipper and I ventured out one weekend morning with the intent to turn this snow into an igloo. An igloo of sorts. We didn’t have the snow or skill to do the roof properly, so we cheated a little. My sister had a “Mr. Turtle Pool” — a green plastic pool about four or five feet wide. Flipped upside down, that would make a perfect roof for our igloo.
Side note: I keep thinking about how good our parents were to us. We had everything we needed. Turtle pools, bikes, video games, and most of all, freedom. Freedom to make a mess of their yard and build this igloo right in the middle of the front lawn.
Snowpants on! Boots, gloves, scarves, hats, and we were ready. We had kiddie shovels at the ready. The three of us started in the morning, and kept going for what seemed like the whole day. Kids lose track of time, and moments become frozen. We didn’t wear watches, and I rarely knew what time it was. We just went out and didn’t come back in until we were bored.
Bob and I began collecting large brick-shaped clumps of snow, and assembling them in a circle – the rough outline of our igloo. Then we began stacking them, and packing the gaps with more snow. The snow was not easy to work with that day, and we frequently had to rebuild what we had started, but eventually, layer by layer, our igloo began taking shape. We left a gap for the door and tested our construction to make sure there was room for three. Time for a break. We had a little shelf on one of the inner walls, perfect to hold a couple soda pop cans or drink boxes. Up and up we built. Good snow was in short supply as we got higher and higher, and we eventually capped it off with the turtle pool.
We were so proud of our little igloo! We called mom and dad outside to look. Unfortunately, they didn’t take any pictures. It wasn’t like today.
The three of us huddled inside the igloo and relaxed after a day of hard work! Soon it would be dark and we would have to go inside, but there was always tomorrow! In the meantime, we sipped our drinks and enjoyed our fort. We’d pretend there was a roaring storm outside and we were taking shelter from the elements.
The best kind of fun was the kind we made on our own. We let our creativity flow, we burned our energy up, and we let our imaginations take us wherever it could. Winter offered opportunities different from summers. You could build a fort in the summer. That was the exclusive property of the cold months. It enabled us to use a different side of our creativity. Later on, Bob studied architecture. Take from that what you will.
Welcome to Homework From My Therapist! I have a new therapist; she’s nice, and fresh ideas are always helpful as I make the transition from Summer to Fall to Winter. She asked me about happy winter stories; I said I had several. She suggested I write them down somewhere I could easily find them, any time I needed a pick-me-up in the winter. Of course, for me, that means the easiest location is right here. I am putting on my Empire Strikes Back soundtrack as I type, and I am in the zone. Let’s do this!
Join me won’t you, for this walk through the winter snow of 1981?
RECORD STORE TALES #1100: Happy Winter Stories Vol. 1 – The Empire Strikes Back
Even as a child I never liked winter, always looking forward to the warmth and freedom of the summer sun. The winter of 1981, however, offered a new opportunity. The Empire Strikes Back was the latest thing. We were collecting all the toys, all the figures, everything we could. With winter here, we now had the opportunity to dress up as the characters for outside role play!
The snow was deep on our tiny frames that winter. You truly could imagine you were on the ice planet of Hoth, if not for all the trees. Winter trips to the cottage offered the more bleak landscape of a completely frozen lake as far as the eye could see, but we didn’t dress in our Star Wars outfits when we made those winter visits. That was a home activity for the winter weekends!
My sister dressed as Luke Skywalker. I let her use my glow-in-the-dark “laser sword” for that purpose. I wanted to be Han.
My dad had made us wooden guns and pistols by cutting shapes out of playwood offcuts and painting rough details. Perfect for a Solo blaster! I used my dad’s real leather holster, which even at its tightest was always so loose. Every good Canadian kid has a pair of snow pants; mine were blue or brown. I grabbed a pair of goggles from a snorkel set. To top it off came my pride and joy: a blue winter coat, with a big furry hood…just like Han Solo’s. I’d strap on my laser pistol on top of that and trudge out into snow for an hour or two.
Other kids from the neighbourhood would drop in and play other roles. Someone would have to roar like Chewbacca as I pretended to trade blasts with an Imperial probe droid.
When it was time to board the Millenium Falcon, we’d jump into my dad’s car in the garage. He didn’t like that part too much, as we fiddled with buttons in a vain attempt to get the Falcon into hyperspace.
When it came time to come in and get warm, we always had the original John Williams soundtrack to keep us entertained with our Kenner action figures. Even so, the importance of the role play can’t be left out of the story. It allowed the kids to go out, run around, burn off energy, and be social with other kids as we all re-enacted our favourite Star Wars movies. We couldn’t just go and pop a video tape into our VCRs. Few of us had a VCR yet.
The Empire Strikes Back was the newest of the Star Wars movies, and was completely new and exciting to all of us, boys and girls alike. We’d all seen it. It was a family thing. Anyone could jump in and play the role of Chewie, 3P0, Princess Leia, or Darth Vader. But I was Han Solo. That was a constant, as non-negotiable as a deal with Jabba the Hutt himself.
We did it all over again in 1982, and 1983. I think I may have commandeered my mom’s ski goggles at that point, refining my costume.
After Return of the Jedi came out in May of ’83, my focused changed to Luke Skywalker. Not only was he suddenly badass instead of this whiny disrespectful little shit, but he looked really cool in his new black outfit. Our role play changed to summer, and I donned a black glove while reclaiming the glow-in-the-dark laser sword as my own. My sister could be Han Solo this time, but that meant she had to pretend to be blind before I saved her!
Star Wars died down pretty quickly after 1983, and as kids we moved on to other interests as well. It must be remembered, the length of time we lived with Empire as “current” Star Wars movie. It came out in spring of 1980, so we were playing Empire and getting Empire toys for Christmas for 1980, ’81, and 1982! For me, that was age 8 to age 10, the most important span of years in a kid’s childhood! For my sister, it was ages 4 to 7, almost as important! That chunk of our lives coincided with a cool “sweet spot” of Star Wars. Not only did we get the best movie of the series, with some of the best toys and figures of the line, but also got three years of yearning anticipation and fear! Was Darth Vader really Luke’s father? How would they save Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt? What was Jabba the Hutt? We had to use our imaginations and we imagined every scenario we could in our games.
Those were good times in some cold, wet winters. Let’s not forget them, nor the warmth of a hot chocolate after we kicked the snow off our boots and hung our snow pants up to dry. That would have been a good winter Saturday in 1981.
Winters at the Record Store were messy! We had a little front vestibule – a glass enclosure that you had to enter before coming in the store. In the winter, it was always sloppy. Filled with slush, water, mud, dirt. It was impossible to keep clean for very long. Customers would come in, stamp the snow off their boots, and this would splatter snow and mud on the glass. In the winter time, as soon as you cleaned it, it would get filthy again. The mats in there were always soaked wet from slush and snow.
In that front vestibule was a snow shovel. We often had to shovel in front of the store after a bad snow. Pretty standard winter gear in Canada. The front vestibule was the sensible place to store the messy shovel during those times, rather than create a puddle of melting slush in the back.
I was working one afternoon when three to four aimless teenagers were killing time in the store. I hate to paint all teenagers with one brush, I was once one too, but I was never as snotty as the kids that I dealt with that day. Like most teenagers, they were just there to kill time. No money was spent.
I kept an eye on them on their way out, and saw one of them grab my shovel and make a break for it!
Who steals a shovel? A fucking shovel?
I ran outside into the cold and yelled.
“HEY! HEY YOU! BRING THAT BACK! THAT’S OUR SHOVEL!”
Having been busted, the kid turned around and said, “I was just trying to see how fast I could run…with a shovel…”
What what? A true WTF moment and one that had me lose faith in the next generation one more time.
I remember one other detail that must be relayed. I sometimes felt that the Big Boss Man did not have my back, and this was just one other incident. I called him and told him what happened, and his reaction was not what I expected. I expected a “Good job,” or “Thanks for keeping your eyes open.” Instead I received, “Mike…you probably shouldn’t have reacted that way.”
What? Now there are two WTF moments!
If the kid had stolen a $5 CD and got away with it, I’d be scolded for not paying attention. He tried to steal a $20 shovel, and I’m the one who got in shit?
I’ll never understand the upper management I dealt with for those years. And I’ve never had to deal with managers like that since. Tells you something.
As long as I can remember, I’ve hated winter, and craved the warm rays of summer. My dominant genes are Mediterranean. My not-so-distant ancestors made their living on the balmy coasts of Sicily, and Amalfi before that. I was never cut out for the cold months.
I took hockey lessons as a kid. I hated putting on those uncomfortable skates and all that cold-weather gear. “Why do I have to take hockey lessons, mom?”
“Every good Canadian boy should know how to skate,” she answered.
Why? Why couldn’t I just stay indoors where it was warm and I didn’t have to bundle up in three layers to go outside? Hockey lessons never appealed, and to this day, I can’t really skate. I mean, I can go forward…I can turn…but I can’t stop. So, I can’t really skate. Do I care? No. It’s been 27 years since I was last on skates. More than half my life ago.
I can’t ski. I can’t even get on the chairlift properly. I haven’t been on skis since…1986 maybe? No interest whatsoever. We would build snowforts and take toboggans downhill, but I would much rather it be warm outside, riding my bike and playing in the sun. The winter was always wet and messy.
My earliest memory of seasonal affective disorder was studying a globe with my dad as a kid. I’ve long been obsessed with maps. I’d study maps until the cows came home. This time, we were looking at a globe. He was explaining how the analemma on the globe worked: that figure-eight line that tracked the movement of the sun over the 12 months of the year. The line can be traced by finding the position of the Sun as viewed from the same position on Earth at the same time every day. In the winter, the sun can be found travelling the line in the southern hemisphere on our globe, but my dad explained, once December 21 came and went, the sun would be making its way back north again. I would look at the globe and find the date on the analemma. It sure made it feel like summer was coming, to see it translated into mere centimeters on a globe.
It’s quite remarkable that I was feeling those feelings as a kid. Not even 10 years old yet? Counting the days until the sun was back in the northern hemisphere. To the days when I shed my outer skin of parkas and boots, and went back down to a T-shirt and shorts, basking in the comfort of the Canadian summer. Seasonal affective disorder has been with me at least that long.
Another memory: winter time, putting on my layers to go outside. By the time all the layers were on, I didn’t want to go outside anymore. My parents really struggled with trying to keep me active in the winter. I wished I could have hibernated through it all.
I wonder if the added component here was school? I hated school. I hated the bullies. The summer represented time away from all of that. I wonder how much that fed into my seasonal affective disorder?
I guess that’s something I can explore with my mental health team this winter, as I try new strategies to stave off the S.A.D.ness. We have some tentative plans and vitamin D is on the menu. Let’s make the most of it.
I think I’m going to go ahead and declare winter “over”. In Canada that can be a rather meaningless gesture, but I’m going to do it anyway. So let’s talk about mental health during the winter of 2022-23.
Winter started mild. Most importantly though, I had this plan, see….
Well you know what they say about plans.
It was a simple plan, and it did work for the first part of the winter. Because I have Seasonal Affective Disorder, winter can be the most difficult time of year for me. Winter in Canada can be unpleasant. Dark, wet, cold, often all three at once. The nights are long. The days are spent in an office. When I arrived at work, it was still dark. When I left for home, it was already dark. This takes its toll. So what was the plan, then? The plan was to try and see winter through new eyes. My good friend the California Girl has never experienced winter. I thought it would be fun to share images and videos of things she doesn’t see every day, like giant icicles, road salt, snowbanks and all the rest of it. For a time, it worked. The novelty of it was really fun. Some of these snowbanks were mountains! Her reactions were entertaining (especially to the idea of road salt). However, as the months dragged it, this wore itself out on me. Every day seemed like a repeat of the last. The snow lingered and lingered on, accumulating and dominating the images.
Things started to go to hell. Everyone in my family except my dad has had Covid, including my 98 year old grandmother.
Oh, my grandmother.
She took ill early this year. We thought was was gone, twice. I wrote her eulogy! I came home from work early and wrote a eulogy…and she keeps hanging on. I have grieved her twice this year already! But she is currently doing well.
My sister has been sick, my mom has been sick, my dad is feeling the years take their toll on his body.
I’ve been sick twice, once with stomach ailments and once with Covid. Same with Jen, but she’s had a much longer dance with Lady ‘Rona. The isolation also takes its toll.
I would say I fell apart a couple times this winter. Two people thought I should see a psychiatrist and get put on happy pills. I have tried happy pills before and they do not work for me. They wreak havoc on my stomach and I prefer to do this without prescriptions. California Girl expressed her concern that I had fallen into a depression, and I agreed with her.
But then things started to change. The clocks went forward, giving more daylight during the leisure hours. The snow started to finally melt. The birds are returning. And soon the snow tires will be off! And that can only mean one thing. Cottage season!
I’m starting to feel like myself again.
This has been without a doubt the most brutal winter since the winter of cancer, 2018. Did you know it was actually the darkest winter in Ontario in 80 years? That means it was the darkest winter most of us have ever experienced.
Winter took its toll, did its damage, but I won. I am still standing and it is gone.
Things are going OK. The days are getting longer. It’s now daylight again when I get home from work. This winter has been cold and rough, I won’t lie to you. There were only three or four really hairy days for driving. I haven’t had to brush too much snow in the mornings. So I’ll take that as a win. Of course, it’s not over yet. There’s always one really big storm in March that you can count on. It usually snows again in April but we’re almost back in cottage season.
I’ve spoken about this before, but it’s funny how perspective changes. In my teens, I hated being at the cottage — away from my friends, toys, and TV shows. Now it’s the best place in the world for me, and my friends are never more than a Streamyard away, no matter where I am. And I can’t wait to get back, and smell those smells and hear those trees creak at night. At present, all I’m hearing at night are hail pellets and snow blowers. The sky is often a dull gray haze. It’s hard not to feel as if there is a heavy weight upon us.
There are other stresses. Family health is always a concern, especially as we get older. We have to keep up with the chores and bills. Maintaining healthy relationships takes effort. Sometimes it also takes effort to take the steps to remove unhealthy relationships. But like a balance, new friends soon enter the picture.
Music continues to be a comfort. Lately the tones of Journey, Styx and Triumph have soothed the soul. A week ago, it was the combined talents of Don Dokken, George Lynch, Jeff Pilson and Wild Mick: Dokken. Under Lock and Key to be specific. What an album!
I’ve just come off a long hiatus from Grab A Stack of Rock. It’s important to avoid burnout, and not just do a show because it’s a new week. I don’t want to burn out again. This last episode with Jex, Tim and John joining the Mad Metal Man and myself was tremendous fun. Adding a guy like Jex made it effortless fun; he brings his own energy. Then I get to go live with my dear friend MarriedAndHeels next. She always makes me smile. I’ve been looking forward to this show all month. It’s probably confusing as hell for any potential audience I may be hoping to build. I go from Japanese Alice Cooper imports one week, to platform shoes the next. Ah well. I’ve always been mercurial and hard to pigeon-hole. That’s the way I like to keep it.
Steve Perry sings it: Winter’s here again, oh Lord! As I listen to Journey, I am reminded of two things. One: The wheel in the sky keeps on turning. Two: Don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow. But that’s OK. You need to have some mystery too. Some hope in the unknown. I hope things get better, soon.
RECORD STORE TALES #1023: “Just the pieces of the man I used to be”
You never know how it’s gonna go.
You roll out of bed feeling like a winner, and then suddenly for absolutely no reason, that completely changes and you’re struggling to break even.
Maybe it’s the pressures of modern life. The hustle and the bustle. The need to get things done, even though you’re behind and energy is in short supply.
The feeling of loneliness even though you are not alone. There’s a dark place in your heart, only inhabited by you, that no one can break into. It’s not that you can’t let them in. It’s that you don’t even know how to open that door. Of if you actually want to. If you’d prefer to be alone.
The daily monotony, the commute, the cold, the damp.
The fact that all the hours of daylight happen when you’re in an office doing your daily grind.
The pressure and drive to do something important, to be someone who matters. To make a difference. To be somebody…anybody…but who you are.
Somehow, a sad song helps. There’s something about a sad song that can pry its way into your soul. Provide sympathy. Warmth. Help you dry the tears. That tells you someone out there is feeling the exact same way you do. It’s as if someone in the world knows you, just as well as you know yourself.
You could be in a room full of happy celebrations, and feel so alone, so completely down, yet have to fake it to make it.
One of the worst winters of my younger life was the winter of ’95-96. I had just been dumped by my first real serious girlfriend. I put on a brave face and for a few days, I thought I had weathered the storm. I listened to “classic British hard blues” that week and felt super strong. The crash came later. One of the albums that helped me through that winter was Queen’s Made In Heaven. The final album with Freddie. Though there is some undeniable dark material on the album, such as “Mother Love”, and “Too Much Love Will Kill You”, I was amazed at how positive some of the other songs such as “Heaven For Everyone” were. The album was like a journey through my own convoluted feelings.
“I’m just the pieces of the man I used to be, Too many bitter tears are raining down on me.”
Yet on the same album:
“In these days of cold affections, You sit by me and everything’s fine.”
What will the album for the winter of 2022 be? For the last several years, I’ve been digging deep down into the albums that made me happy as a youth.
“Listen! They said I didn’t stand a chance, I wouldn’t win no way, But I’ve got news for you, There’s nothing I can’t do!”
It was a different time. There was misery, but nothing can duplicate that feeling of hearing a song for the first time. A song that you know means something to you. That is destined to stick with you for your whole life. And when you put those records on again, a million things start happening in your head. You can be 12 or 13 again. A time when the real problems of life were completely unknown to you and the biggest issue you had was figuring out how to talk to the girl you liked.
Like a phantom of a dream, old songs make the memories real again. As you wipe a tear from your eye, you remember. It can help sooth the sadness.
Sometimes you just have to cry it out, whatever it is. Hell, I don’t know what it is exactly. I just know it sucks.
They say that life never hands you anything you can’t handle. I don’t know about that. History is rife with people who could not handle what life has given them. I think I can – but it’s never simple, straightforward, or obvious how to do it.
So I write.
It’s the only thing I’m really good at. The only thing people really notice about me.
I write in the hopes that someone will understand.
That someone will relate.
That someone can take what I have experienced and draw something good from it.
And that maybe I’ll get some of that goodness back.
This winter has been pretty good. My strategies are working. My support personnel are solid. But there will always be days where I can’t help it. Can’t help FEELING IT. The old familiar sting of that cold, unrelenting loneliness. The kind of loneliness that can strike even when you are in a room full of loved ones.
One of the best albums for this time of year is Catherine Wheel’s Adam & Eve record. It captures it all.
“Start the day, in a cold December way, feel what’s new, it’s December through and through.”
And on the same record:
“And we crown ourselves again, There’s been no change since you and I were young, When we burned ourselves again, The spaceship days when you and I were young.”
I crave those spaceship days so hard sometimes. But you can never really go back.
Except with a song.
Come back with me. Join me in my memories, on this sad, cold winter day.
2022: the winter that snow came back in a big way! The sheer size of the snowbanks brings me back to the winter of ’85, in my old neighbourhood. The snowbanks on the corner rival the ones we had in my youth, something I have not seen in many years. And I remembered the snowfort that George Balasz built on that corner; a regal thing indeed. The most palacious snowfort I have ever occupied! And even this story works its way back around to music.
1985 was the year I got seriously into hard rock. The Pepsi Power Hour was my favourite show and I was just absorbing all this new music through my neighbours. George had an excellent LP collection and he’d always let me tape whatever I wanted.
He had a house on the corner, and in the winter the snowbanks built up as high as I could stand. That was the year he built the ultimate fort. As I remember it, the fort had plywood roof supports, and four rooms inside, lined up in a row. You could squeeze four or five kids in there. My dad was always afraid we’d get taken out by a wayward errant car, but it never happened. He didn’t like us hanging out with George (thought he was a pervert) but he really didn’t like us hanging out in that snowfort.
George ran an extension cord out to the fort so we could listen to tapes on his ghetto blaster. We had a conversation about Judas Priest. Defenders of the Faith was their latest record and I was well familiar with the music video for “Freewheel Burning”. But I was just learning the basics and I had a lot of questions.
“What’s a hippie?” I asked George.
He didn’t really know, but acted like he did. His authoritative answer was “Hippies have long hair.”
“Well then what is Ian Johnson at school talking about?” I asked him. “He said he didn’t like Judas Priest because they’re a bunch of hippies. But Rob Halford doesn’t even have long hair.”
“You’re right,” said George. I was happy to know a few things like the names of some of the members. George or Bob Schipper gave me my first Priest poster, with the five of them standing in a row in the Defenders-era costume. I thought Dave Holland looked the coolest because of that moustache. I taped a copy of the album, but Priest songs like “Eat Me Alive” were still a bit on the heavy side for me.
I wonder what Ian was on about, with that hippie comment. He probably had no idea what the word meant either. Priest might have been considered hippies in the early 1970s, when they were wearing kaftans and denim floods. They abandoned that look a long time ago and were really known for their leather and studs. Meanwhile, Ian Johnson ditched the metal for new wave, by his own admission, in order to find a girl. His opinions and stories changed regularly.
Though my dad worried, and this irritated me, we had good times in that snowfort. George was a bit of a local punching bag, a strange guy slightly older who shoplifted and read porn. He seemed desperately lonely some times, and maybe he had to be if he was hanging out with all these younger kids. He was the oldest teenager in the neighbourhood and it didn’t seem like he had a lot of friends at school. I could identify with the latter.
As the snowfort hippies bantered about Priest, one teaching and one learning, the boombox would be moaning out our favourite songs. We talked about how cool it would be to put in a TV in the fort, but a warm spell eventually caved in the roofs. Although George undertook a mighty rebuilding effort one afternoon, the fort was all but done for the year.
But not done in my memory. As I drive around the corner, I smile remembering my dad’s warnings about safety. I play some Defenders of the Faith and raise my coffee to George, now long gone himself.
I sound like a broken record at the end of every summer. It’s tough to keep the spirits up at this time of year. It’s likely I’ve taken my last swim of 2021. Next time we get to the lake, the sun will be down by the time we arrive. And then will come the day it is covered with snow, and empty for the winter slumber.
Music helps – music always, always helps. So does writing. But it is an annual challenge.
When I was a kid, the end of August would signal the start of the “sad times”. The back-to-school ads. Reminders that I was going to have to spend another year with a bunch of bullies again. Then the colder weather started to roll in. Our family would take two weeks of vacation in August but back then, they were two cold, rainy weeks. (Not like today.) You had to start dressing in long pants and sweat shirts.
Shopping for notebooks and new school clothes. Realizing that a few weeks of warm freedom were about to be replaced by 10 months of misery. I hated Labour Day weekend. Back to the “hell hole” as my sister would say. These feelings stick with me today. I can’t flip the calendar from August to September without them.
Even though I’m not in school anymore, the heavy heart returns. I now know that I have Seasonal Affective Disorder and it’s something I need to fight every fall.
Last year was a success! I avoided the seasonal depression. I spent my summer making lots of videos, to take me back there in my mind when I needed it. I also had the show, the LeBrain Train, to look forward to every weekend. This year is different. The videos and photos don’t have the same impact two years in a row, and since May the LeBrain Train has become more of a burden than a joy. I need something new to keep my spirits up this winter, and I don’t yet know what that is. It is true that we have a long September ahead, warm but shorter days. I hope this mitigating factor helps. I think what I really need is some new creative spark to keep me looking forward. Last year it was the LeBrain Train but the burnout factor has ensured that I need something fresh that I can look forward to from September to May.
What used to cheer me up at this time of year?
As a kid I used to be excited for a new season of the Pepsi Power Hour which hasn’t existed in 30 years. I don’t watch a lot of TV these days, but fortunately Marvel has constant content forthcoming on Disney+. We have a new Iron Maiden album to look forward to, but the idea of new music from my favourite bands doesn’t have the same excitement factor as when I was 15 years old. Yes I’m happy there is a new Iron Maiden coming, but compared to the sheer expectation of Seventh Son coming out in ’88? No chills.
It feels like…work? Like I haven’t finished digesting The Book of Souls and here comes another one. I can’t remember how half that album goes, and now we have a new one to get to know. It’s not like in the old days when I felt literally starved of Iron Maiden because I’d played all their albums over and over and over. Now, there are so many that you don’t necessarily even play them all in a year.
Back then, getting a new Iron Maiden album felt just as amazing as a new Star Wars or Marvel movie today. Something you have been anticipating for a while. Music videos were like movie trailers. We’d watch repeatedly, we’d pause, and we’d slo-mo trying to glimpse details. Costumes, instruments, stage sets, all of it.
When I was working at the Record Store, I still didn’t know that this seasonal depression thing was real and not just me. It often came and went in spurts. I used to call them a “big blue funk”. 2003 was a very “funky” year for me. I’d been dumped (twice) by my Radio Station Girl, and even with a new Iron Maiden in my back pocket (Dance of Death, and also a new Deep Purple called Bananas) I still felt like I needed to do something to help me get through the winter. And there was something I used to do to pick myself up back then, especially if I had my heart broke. Yes, broken hearts are for assholes, but I chose to get new holes. On September 3, I went to Stigmata in Guelph and got my nose pierced.
It was my third visit to the tattoo studio that year. After Radio Station Girl dumped me, I got my lip pierced at Stigmata. A couple months later I got my tragus pierced — that piece of cartilage at the opening of your ear. A friend of mine named Lois Sarah had just started piercing there and if I remember the details correctly, I was a guinea pig. It’s fun to go back and read my notes!
Lois asked if I was ready. I said yes, and she asked me to take a deep breath and exhale….
I said, “Wow, I didn’t feel a thing.”
Lois said, “That’s because it’s not through yet.”
I felt the needle go through at least 3 distinct layers of cartilage. Each one hurt more than the last. On the last layer, I said, “FUCK” and both my legs shot out.
Lois did a great job and it’s the one piercing that I do still have.
But September 3 2003 was just my nose, nothing too painful. It was Labour Day weekend once more, and I decided to go for it. Normally I went to get a piercing with a “wingman” but this was my first time going alone. I distinctly remember wearing my Iron Bitchface T-shirt. An uber-cool looking guy with a massive afro shot me an approving glance, so I felt good from the get-go.
I was led to the back room, but not before washing up my hands with disinfectant gel. I sat down in the Very Big Chair, as I liked to call it, and Lois prepared the goods. She marked my nostril with a dot and got the position right where I wanted it. Then she applied some iodine to the area, both inside and out. She tested out the position of the receiving tube, and finally asked me to take a deep breath. As I exhaled, the needle went in no problem. Almost no pain at all. I’ve been pinched harder. (By your mom.)
The rest of the year still sucked, nose ring or not. It was the year of working with the Dandy, a manchild that drove me slowly mad as he sucked up to the big-wigs. Work was miserable and not getting any better. But at least I was proactive, and did something that I thought would help. Something that helped in the past.
I’ve been there and done that with piercings, and though I like the look of them, I don’t enjoy the upkeep. I prefer to spend my money on something more permanent, like a tattoo. That’s something to consider, but I think I need to look elsewhere for a bright spot this winter. Maybe I will find my joy in the live show once again, but I can’t count on it. Truth be told, I haven’t been feeling it as much since May. I remember telling Deke that I was struggling and he suggested back then that I take a break. But I didn’t feel like I could take that break until the end of the summer. And here we are.
So now I search for some new slant on my creative outlet to revitalize me. Something to look forward to regularly. I was very lucky during the winter of 2020-2021. I hope I can pull it off again!
Plans. Gotta make ’em, but sometimes nothing goes according to them.
Winter is over. We made it through. I have Seasonal Affective Disorder (appropriately acronymed as SAD), so winter is always a hard time. It feels good to be on the other side of it, and not have to put on layers of warmth just to take out the garbage.
Last fall I made some plans to make it through the winter. I completed some, and I left others unstarted. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles, and what was winter 2020/21 but a shitty stale crumbled up cookie?
As we hunkered in for the winter, I gave myself a couple projects to keep me occupied. One was continuing with the VHS Archives. I accomplished very little on this. I did not play any video tapes at all this year, and only uploaded videos I already had on my hard drive. This season I only posted six videos.
I also wanted to teach myself Photoshop this winter. I didn’t get anything done there. As it turns out, I didn’t really have to, thanks to the generosity of friends. Good ol’ T-Bone has donated his time and made plenty of great artwork for the LeBrain Train live show. Plus our artist friend Saige did some great work too. I’m so lucky that we have built such an amazing community of artists and writers together.
Speaking of the live show, I had one plan that I thought would be easy, but never came to be. As a proud Canadian boy, I wanted to show some of our American friends (especially the one in Hawaii!) what a Canadian winter looks like. I planned on doing a live show outdoors in a snow storm. I thought that would be an absolute hoot. The weather never really aligned with a good live stream day. It was kind of a mild winter compared to others.
Looking back at the goals from the fall, there are two I did accomplish. One was to make a dashcam video of a shitty winter drive, set to the music of Max the Axe. I did that with “Magnum P.I.” and it is a great example of a typical winter commute. The second mission accomplished was to keep on live streaming. I still haven’t missed a week — knock wood.
I couldn’t have done it without my friends. You know who you are. Chances are if you’re reading this, you’re one of ’em.
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